I don't think this is it. The point of allowing only Likes and not Dislikes seems to me a social thing rather than a usage thing.
Netflix lets you "dislike" something (implicitly using star ratings) because no one sees those ratings except you.
Amazon and Yelp let you dislike things because there is, for the most part, no interactivity around the ratings. A Yelp review or Amazon review generates no flame wars or ill will towards the user base.
So, at least from the examples in this blog post, that leaves Reddit, where downvotes frequently embolden trolls, causes large amounts of moaning about receiving said downvotes, and escalates flamewars as the downvoted have karmic reason to fight more and with increasing aggressiveness.
Disliking things has a negative social impact. It escalates disagreements and makes everyone simply observing the content feel just a bit dirtier for having to witness the ensuing melee.
Sure, it reduces the breadth of possible communication, but people go on Facebook and G+ to feel good and catch up, so a system where things can only be liked and it's hard to hate on something is preferable, even if it is unrealistic.
> [...]but people go on Facebook and G+ to feel good[...]
Very true, but to add to that another factor that shouldn't be underestimated is that it's companies advertising on these platforms that are footing the bill for their operations.
Fewer companies will want to advertise with you if their company/product page can be disliked. To name an example Monsanto has ~22k likes (https://www.facebook.com/MonsantoCo) they'd probably have at least two orders of magnitude as many dislikes if people could "dislike".
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Sites like Amazon, NewEgg, EBay, and anyplace else with a ratings system for products and product sellers seem to do fine, despite the potential for getting negative reviews and ratings. These are sales channels rather than advertising channels, so maybe that makes the difference.
You nailed it - wherever people can dislike, downvote etc. there will eventually be a lot of flaming, mobbing and other bad behaviour that discourages people from using that website. We have a forum where you can like and dislike posts and some people actually spend a lot of time disliking posts by people they don't like systematically (up to 50/day are allowed). We're now considering a very low limit for dislikes/day ...
I don't think 'like only' reduces the breadth of communication that much more than simple like/dislike does already. Especially if only the net difference is shown (1000 upvotes - 999 downvotes says a lot more than 1 vote.)
When I see articles upvoted on HN I'm never quite sure if the number of votes is telling me 'good article', 'raise your awareness of this issue' or 'good discussion about this in the comments'.
Yes I think this is definitely a more likely reason. Having "dislikes" on Facebook could also make people feel bad about things they've posted, which would make them less likely to associate negative feelings with the site, likely leading to decreased usage for some people. So it's in FB's direct interest to not have "dislike."
Contrary to the reddit example, I think downvotes here on HN work out decently. I've mostly only seen spam, off-topic, rude etc. comments downvoted here.
Yeah, when you get to some level in karma points (currently 500, I think), you're allowed to downvote comments. Comments with negative score will appear lighter/harder to read.
Comments
I don't think this is it. The point of allowing only Likes and not Dislikes seems to me a social thing rather than a usage thing.
Netflix lets you "dislike" something (implicitly using star ratings) because no one sees those ratings except you.
Amazon and Yelp let you dislike things because there is, for the most part, no interactivity around the ratings. A Yelp review or Amazon review generates no flame wars or ill will towards the user base.
So, at least from the examples in this blog post, that leaves Reddit, where downvotes frequently embolden trolls, causes large amounts of moaning about receiving said downvotes, and escalates flamewars as the downvoted have karmic reason to fight more and with increasing aggressiveness.
Disliking things has a negative social impact. It escalates disagreements and makes everyone simply observing the content feel just a bit dirtier for having to witness the ensuing melee.
Sure, it reduces the breadth of possible communication, but people go on Facebook and G+ to feel good and catch up, so a system where things can only be liked and it's hard to hate on something is preferable, even if it is unrealistic.
Fewer companies will want to advertise with you if their company/product page can be disliked. To name an example Monsanto has ~22k likes (https://www.facebook.com/MonsantoCo) they'd probably have at least two orders of magnitude as many dislikes if people could "dislike".
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Sites like Amazon, NewEgg, EBay, and anyplace else with a ratings system for products and product sellers seem to do fine, despite the potential for getting negative reviews and ratings. These are sales channels rather than advertising channels, so maybe that makes the difference.
You nailed it - wherever people can dislike, downvote etc. there will eventually be a lot of flaming, mobbing and other bad behaviour that discourages people from using that website. We have a forum where you can like and dislike posts and some people actually spend a lot of time disliking posts by people they don't like systematically (up to 50/day are allowed). We're now considering a very low limit for dislikes/day ...
I don't think 'like only' reduces the breadth of communication that much more than simple like/dislike does already. Especially if only the net difference is shown (1000 upvotes - 999 downvotes says a lot more than 1 vote.)
When I see articles upvoted on HN I'm never quite sure if the number of votes is telling me 'good article', 'raise your awareness of this issue' or 'good discussion about this in the comments'.
Yes I think this is definitely a more likely reason. Having "dislikes" on Facebook could also make people feel bad about things they've posted, which would make them less likely to associate negative feelings with the site, likely leading to decreased usage for some people. So it's in FB's direct interest to not have "dislike."
Contrary to the reddit example, I think downvotes here on HN work out decently. I've mostly only seen spam, off-topic, rude etc. comments downvoted here.
Downvotes on HN?
Yeah, when you get to some level in karma points (currently 500, I think), you're allowed to downvote comments. Comments with negative score will appear lighter/harder to read.